The invention relates to a machine for mowing and chopping corn and similar stalk-like harvested crops.
For such machines, the stalks of the harvested crops are drawn in in the upright position by drawing-in and mowing drums and mown and subsequently supplied to the chopper by the insertion duct, which takes up the cut, harvested crops. In the course of rationalizing the harvesting operation, large, self-propelled field choppers with high outputs are used, the chopper with its knife drum or similar chopping tool being dimensioned correspondingly large. For the chopping tool, this requires a wide insertion duct for the cut, harvested crops with fitting dimensions transversely to the driving direction of the chopper.
An insertion duct, broadened in this manner, presents difficulties during the harvesting operation owing to the fact that the conveying drums, laterally bounding the insertion duct, convey the harvested crops, transported along, mainly in the central region of the insertion duct, while the two outer regions are not supplied. This uneven supplying of the harvested crops results, on the one hand, in uneven wear of the chopping tool and, on the other, due to the concentration of large masses of material in the central region of the insertion duct, overloading of the chopper can occur, which leads to a response of the safety couplings usually provided and, with that, to interruptions of the operation, which delay the harvesting operation.
Attempts to load the insertion duct uniformly over the whole width of the duct with harvested crops simply by placing the lateral conveying drums further apart transversely to the driving direction, were unsuccessful since, by these means, the insertion duct and, with that, the correspondingly wide chopper drum were filled mainly in the two outer, lateral end regions of the insertion duct, while the center of the duct is under-supplied in this case with harvested crops. Uneven wear, associated with the danger of frequent stoppages because of overloading, once again arises this way.